Mary Piccioli

Have you read Robert Fulghum’s “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”? The first thing on his list is “share everything.” There are many people on college campuses whose professional positions require that they provide reports and data analysis. These professionals can often be categorized into two groups – data sharers and data hoarders. As their “types” would indicate, data sharers are quick to provide charts, tables, and reports to their colleagues to keep them informed about topics of common interest. Many of them are genuinely excited to share data and presentation techniques. Then there are the data hoarders. At times, they may get hung up on the power of information and tend to hold data close to the vest.…Read more

In early summer Kathy Kurz wrote a blog about the media frenzy surrounding student loan debt reaching $1 trillion. Now that fall has arrived and new statistics are available, I thought I would share a few. According to the Project on Student Debt, an initiative of the Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS), here are some interesting statistics on student debt for the Class of 2011, those who graduated from four-year public and not-for-profit colleges and universities: 1 in 3 students graduated with no student loan debt. That’s $0 debt. For the two-thirds who did borrow, average debt compared to the class of 2010 increased 5.3%, from $25,250 to $26,600. Unemployment for college graduates, a contributing factor to the concern…Read more

My colleague Don Gray wrote a great blog a few weeks ago about the importance of marketing the value of your institution’s degree. He discussed some of the key metrics necessary in telling the story in a compelling way. Part and parcel to the need for developing those key metrics, among them job/graduate school placement rates and average starting salary by academic programs, is the imperative that the data presented be representative and reliable. Over the years our consulting team has visited hundreds of campuses, and an area where we often find a glaring weakness is with an institution’s survey of a recent graduating class. Here is what we often find: A low response rate to the survey. Unless the response rate is at least 60%, follow…Read more